“Excuse me, do you buy frog meat?”

“ Yeh, we buy small ones for ten coppahs, the dog sized ones for eighty coppahs to two silvah’ pendin on the size, and the adult ones…well no one usually goes to through the trouble of getting them because they’re hard to kill those buggehs, but if you sell me a big one, the pay is ten silvahs”

Darren walked towards the lake with his bundle of sharp sticks tied with twine in one arm and an iron shovel , that cost his three weeks of savings to buy from the blacksmith, on the other.

•••••

Jurvin was having a bad day, a horrible day. He’d been assigned to this shithole village then sent to guard this port, where the most he would do is fend off big as shite frogs with his spear every once in a while and eat the poorly spiced gruel the cook in the barracks gave to the guards, all because he was “helping” some of the more unfriendly folks in the city. It wasn’t he fault that they gave him free coin to just skip going to some alleys at night, hell he would’ve skipped them anyway, a guard wasn’t paid enough to throw away is life just like that. Leave that shite to those stuck up “honor is everything” rookies He thought.

He spotted some movement in the distance. His thoughts of anger instantly got replaced by thoughts of amusement, if only for a short while.

“What in the blighted…..”

A slim man with black hair and was running with a thick,pointed stick, but that’s what caught his attention, the 5 greywolf-sized frogs and the one huge fockn mama-frog did.

•••••

Darren was running from frogs yet again, this world seemed to love throwing shit at him. He was aiming for just the small ones and maybe a single medium sized one, I didn’t sign up for this shit he thought as he continued running the frogs getting ever so close. He guessed that the big ones could swallow him whole and also trample him flat. These thoughts made him run faster. Faster into an area near the forest

Thump, tak tak tak tak tak,Thump tak tak tak tak tak.

Darren heard the sounds coming closer to him, if he could just reach it in time. He heard the sounds again. This time they were so close he could feel the vibrations when the huge one landed. A crash of leaves then

Silence

A flurry of chaotic movement from the pit that took Darren three days to dig. He peered down on the pit It worked he thought with a mad glee. Then the huge frog started croaking with what seemed to be anger. It was bleeding from its gut and its legs were punctured by the spikes Darren set into the ground. The frog was looking up at him with what Darren was sure was a glare.He saw that its hind legs, despite being punctured by numerous stakes, were tightening, getting ready to release energy. Fuck I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Darren groaned internally.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” he screamed , as he hoped he wouldn’t slide into the numerous spikes he set in the pit.

He jumped down to the frog's back using the technique Oz thought him. Angling the stake to impact the frog. He hit it in the neck. Darren climbed to its head, he had a hard time with all the slime , but eventually reached it. He pulled out the stake from the frogs neck and brained it. The sharpened wooden stake going through the giant frog’s slippery skin. Again, and again and again. Darren stabbed the same hole so many times that all that was left of that part of the frog’s brain was a grey slurry.

He carefully slid down, being careful not to get impaled on his own stakes. He took each stake off then walked through. He stabbed the dog-sized frogs in the brains just to be sure, took off a bunch of spikes before climbing out of the pit.

A guard from the nearby pier approached him.

“Fockin’ ell, are you fockn mad lad? That was beautiful!”

Darren looked at him all bloody and slimy, the guard had brown hair and some stubble, and had the same armor and weapons as the other guards.

“Yeah, thanks…. I guess” Darren gave a tired smile. “Can you please help hail me a cart and get these frogs to town? I can pay you”

The guard ran to town and pretty soon there was a carriage. The driver of the carriage came down to help them lift the frogs out. They removed all the spikes surrounding the frogs and tied rope to the dead frogs attached to a few still standing spikes.

“One, Two, Three ,Pull!” the three of them yelled in unison. They did this for several more times, until the biggest frog was finally out of the pit and loaded in to the cart along with the other five frogs.

The carriage moved slowly into town the horses struggling a bit with the weight of the frogs. When they reached the butcher in the town center, they put down the frogs in front of him. The butcher looked at them with amused face, then he inspected each frog, lifting some parts like the legs and bellies.

“Well, I can give ya sixteen silvah for the whole bunch” he said

“I’ll take three as payment for the carriage”

“ two silver would be fine for me, if were naming our prices ‘ere”

Darren agreed, the butcher gave the two men their share and they went on they were off, the guard with a grin on his face.

The butcher gave Darren the remaining silver coins he was owed.

eleven silver! Im fucking rich! Darren thought, but resolved never to do that again, three days of work and almost dying wasn’t really worth 11 silvers. Darren decided to join the guild, he had a bit of capital and he had heard that guild jobs pay well, He was gonna be a billionaire again in no time! Or a king, or maybe a lord? Darren didn’t know nor did he care he was so happy, he could finally stop living like a goddamn beggar or vagabond or whatever they called him when he first got here.

He walked towards the guild. Then it hit him.

I need a bath